TUESDAY 28 APRIL 2015, 6PM FOR 6.30PMTIMOTHY MOORE, ‘SCREENSAVER ARCHITECTURE: BETWEEN COLLINGWOOD IS DEAD AND LONG LIVE COLLINGWOOD’

The third Gertrude Contemporary–Discipline lecture for 2015 will be given by Timothy Moore on Tuesday the 28th of April, at 6pm for a 6.30pm start. Please N.B. the change of venue to Kalex at 166 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy.

ABSTRACTTemporary architecture — that forms a community pavilion or event, a communal working space, artistic intervention, cultural platform or gastronomical destination — has had increased attention in wealthy economies in the twenty-first century. The pop-up project soon pops-down, however its effects are far from temporary. This is the screensaver, where a temporary project acts as a transition slide for a city yet to come. Screensaver architecture can be read cynically as low-cost aesthetic camouflage that may disguise speculative development to follow. Or it may provide fleeting moments to create new civic meaning and forms outside of market-driven property and planning frameworks. Whatever position you may take, the screensaver needs you, the creative, to join in on the fun. What should you do as a creative citizen? Do you resist, revolutionise or compromise? What is the potential of screensaver architecture, which straddles two moments in time?

BIOGRAPHYTimothy Moore is a director of architecture office SIBLING, which is completing two projects in Collingwood, VICE’s Australian headquarters and a contemporary gallery that will house a Gertrude Contemporary project space. Prior to SIBLING, Timothy worked at architecture offices in Melbourne, Amsterdam and Berlin, and as an editor for two influential architecture magazines, Volume and Architecture Australia. Timothy’s work has extended beyond architecture and publishing to strategic urban design when working as a project director for Right Angle Studio developing temporary activation strategies for large urban regeneration sites, and is currently undertaking a PhD in the University of Melbourne’s Architecture, Building and Planning Faculty on this topic. He currently sits on the City of Yarra Arts Room To Create Advisory Committee, and is co-creating a series of community conversations for the City of Melbourne as a core commitment of its Arts Strategy.

The Gertrude Contemporary–Discipline ContemporaryArt Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. Established in April 2013, the series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Invited lecturers speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

This reading group will discuss philosopher Matteo Pasquinelli’s essay 'The Number of the Collective Beast: Value in the Age of the New Algorithmic Institutions of Ranking and Rating' (2014) that asks the question: how do we measure value? Any form of (cultural, artistic, academic, material) production is today immersed into the same machinic sphere of valorisation, namely into a network. Examples of this can be seen in the pervasive link economy of Google’s PageRank algorithm, the geopolitical influence of international rating agencies, as well as the mundane hierarchies of the artworld. Nevertheless, a political critique of these machinic institutions of rating and ranking, that are collectively and socially generating the new “number of the beast” (or, the measure of collective value), he argues, is still missing.

This discussion is linked to the subject of Liang Luscombe’s painting currently exhibited in Slide, which is the now-shelved Australian Cultural Policy, Creative Australia, introduced in the dying days of Julia Gillard’s Labor Government in 2013. This was the first whole-of-government federal cultural policy in two decades. When the Liberal Government came into power, however, they archived the policy. While this is only one example of how institutions rank and rate artistic practice, the discussion looks to imagine different methods that we employ to critique this mechanism.

Read Matteo Pasquinelli’s essay 'The Number of the Collective Beast: Value in the Age of the New Algorithmic Institutions of Ranking and Rating The How' here.

For the extra keen, supplementary reading of the archived Creative Australia Cultural Policy can be found here.

The second Gertrude Contemporary–Discipline lecture for 2015 will be given by Patricia Reed on Tuesday the 3rd of March, at 6pm for a 6.30pm start. Reed’s lecture is co-presented with MADA — Monash University Art Design and Architecture.

ABSTRACT:Where is the future? Such a question deliberately situates the future as a territory to be engineered, a future not merely unveiled by mechanisms (or automatisms) of critique. The future demands an exercise rooted in the speculative labour of linking knowing with doing, namely ethics, and not sheer gestures of cognitive negativity. The future demands affirmation. This diagrammatic talk will cull from recent (left) Accelerationist discourse and probe the constructability of futurity, partially via the humble back door of artistic practice.

RESPONDENT:Sean Dockray

BIOGRAPHIES:Patricia Reed is an artist and writer. Exhibitions have included those at the Witte de With (NL); Haus der Kulturen der Welt (DE); Kunsthaus Langenthal (CH); Württembergische Kunstverein (DE); Audain Gallery (CA); and 0047 (NO), amongst others. As a writer she has contributed to several books and periodicals including: #ACCELERATE — The Accelerationist Reader; The Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism Vol. II; Mould Magazine; Material #4; Who Told You So?!; A Joy Forever (in Polish) Institutions By Artists; Intangible Economies; Cognitive Architecture: From Biopolitics to Noopolitics; Critical Spatial Practice; C Magazine; Fillip, Art Papers, Shifter and Framework. Lectures have included those at The Future Summit — Montreal Biennale (CA); Tate Britain (UK, Speculative Tate); University of Westminster (UK); Dampfzentrale (CH); Artists Space (US); MIT (US); abc Berlin (DE); Archive Kabinett (DE); and The Winter School Middle East (KW). Reed plays host to the Inclinations lecture series at Or Gallery in Berlin, where she also lives. She teaches and is a board member for The New Centre for Research and Practice, and is part of the Laboria Cuboniks working group.

Sean Dockray is an artist and writer and a PhD candidate at the VCA. He initiated the autonomous pedagogical projects The Public School and AAAARG.ORG, and was a founding director of Telic Arts Exchange in Los Angeles.

The Gertrude Contemporary–Discipline Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. Established in April 2013, the series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Invited lecturers speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

MONDAY 23 FEBRUARY, 6.00PM FOR A 6.30PM STARTADRIAN MARTIN, '"DO I HAVE TO SPELL IT OUT?: ON WRITING WITH IMAGES (AND SOUND)'

The first Gertrude Contemporary–Discipline lecture for 2015 will be given by Adrian Martin on Monday the 23rd of February, at 6pm for a 6.30pm start. Martin’s paper is titled ‘Do I Have to Spell It Out in Words?: On Writing with Images (and Sounds)’ and it examines contemporary art criticism in the age of the Internet, focussing specifically on the art historian and critic James Elkins’s new project ‘Writing with Images’.

ABSTRACT: Currently online, the critic James Elkins — on his way out of art history and preparing to write a novel — is developing a fascinating website project titled ‘Writing with Images’. He means this in two senses: how does writing conventionally ‘go with’ images in art criticism, how are the two media arranged in relation to each other? His critique of this traditional art/text relation in the worlds of publishing, criticism and academia is often rightly withering. So then he intends the phrase radically: is it possible to write with images themselves, and to bring the two ‘writings’ — text and image — into a more dynamic, fertile combination? Such arguments about ‘text and art’ have gone on, at various, levels for at least forty or fifty years, and not least in Australia. They have also happened in other areas with which Elkins seems unaware, such as film criticism — where the recent trend of the ‘audiovisual essay’ endeavours to write with text, image and sound simultaneously, instead of only published words. This lecture will outline some of the key issues Elkins raises and embed them in diverse practices of contemporary arts criticism and hybrid ‘creative commentary’ experiments.

RESPONDENT: Ted Colless

BIOGRAPHY: Adrian Martin has just finished a two-year stint as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Film Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt. He is about to relocate to Spain to be a full-time writer and audiovisual essayist, but remains Adjunct Associate Professor of Film at Monash University. The Gertrude Contemporary–Discipline Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbournebased contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. Established in April 2013, the series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Invited lecturers speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

Vivian Ziherl will engage in a public discussion venturing some initial thoughts and analytics towards her Curatorial Fellowship with the Institute of Modern Art on the thematic of 'Frontier Imaginaries'.

Friday 9 January 20156pm for a 6.30pm startGertrude Contemporary

Thursday 15 January 20156–8pmInstitute of Modern Art

ABSTRACT:Departing from the notion of the ‘Brisbane Line’, Vivian will advance the proposition that the ‘Frontier’ may be understood as the site at which primitive accumulation occurs. From this premise, she will chart the advance of Frontier conditions through the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pacific economy, the reterritorialising nature of the Frontier within the era of globalisation, as well as conjecturing on the conditions of its possible otherwise.

BIO:Vivian Ziherl is a Curator at If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part Of Your Revolution (Amsterdam) and Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane). Her recent projects include Landings (with Natasha Ginwala) presented at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, David Roberts Art Foundation, NGBK (as part of the Tagore, Pedagogy and Contemporary Visual Cultures Network), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and other partner organisations, 2013-ongoing, as well as the performance series “Stage It!” Parts 1 and 2 (with Hendrik Folkerts) commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Vivian has presented programmes with the ICA London, teaches with the Sandberg Institute Department of Critical Studies, and is editor of The Lip Anthology (Macmillan Art Publishing and Kunstverein Publishing). Her writing has been published in the Curating Research anthology (eds. Paul O’Neil and Mick Wilson) and has appeared in periodicals including the e-Flux Journal, Art Agenda, Frieze, LEAP Magazine, Metropolis M, Discipline, and the Journal of Art (Art Association of Australia and New Zealand), among others.

Vivian Ziherl’s Curatorial Fellowship has been made possible through the generous support of the Australia Council for the Arts.

PUBLIC MEETING: WEAK SIGNALS/LOW BATTERIES

FRIDAY 19 DECEMBER 2014, 10:30AM–1:30PM

Gertrude Contemporary, the Institute of Modern Art, Landings and Discipline co-present ‘Public Meeting: Weak Signals/Low Batteries’ — a screening of the Karrabing Film Collective’s When the Dogs Talked (2014) accompanied by a discussion. The meetings will take place at Gertrude Contemporary on the 19th of December, and at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane on the 20th of December.

The Karrabing Film Collective’s short feature film When the Dogs Talked blends documentary and fictional modes to track the lives of the people that made it. As the film shows, finding ways to live life can be exhausting — we often run out of batteries. The film offers at least one way in which a group of people might charge these up again. But where can the film itself find a place? Is the rapaciously expansive world of contemporary art such a place? Can the abstract globality of contemporary art be brought back to earth?

Led by Landings and Discipline, these two public meetings, one in Melbourne and one in Brisbane, will bring diverse voices to bear upon the film’s semi-fictional account of life across urban dwelling and Aboriginal homeland, questioning how choices can be made amid the incommensurable conditions of settler-colonial politics.

Key invited guests will structure a ‘plenum’ in which the voices of members of the public will be facilitated to join in. Guests will include: members of the Karrabing Film Collective, including Linda Yarrowin and Trevor Bianamu; Elizabeth Povinelli, Columbia University, New York; Nikos Papastergiadis, University of Melbourne; Denise Ferreira da Silva, Queen Mary University, London; Julieta Aranda, artist and editor, e-flux journal; Rachel O’Reilly, critic, poet and editor; Tom Nicholson, artist; and Richard Bell, artist (Brisbane only).

INSIDE, OUTSIDE AND IN PARALLEL: SPECULATIONS FROM FOUR CURATORS WORKING IN THE TURKISH CONTEXT

Mari Spirito, Övül DurmuÅŸoÄŸlu, BaÅŸak ÅÅ¾enova and November Paynter

WEDNESDAY 29 OCTOBER, 5.45 FOR 6PM

The next Gertrude-Discipline lecture takes the form of a panel: a discussion between four curators whose work concerns the presentation and production of contemporary art from Turkey. Mari Spirito, Övül DurmuÅŸoÄŸlu, BaÅŸak ÅÅ¾enova and November Paynter represent a range of voices from within the independent, not-for-profit and museum sectors in Turkey. They will discuss their approaches to curating contemporary Turkish art, highlighting the individual concerns, challenges and circumstances that motivate and inform their curatorial approaches.

Following the panel discussion, Associate Professor and Director of Curatorial Practise at Monash University and Editor at-large for The Exhibitionist, Tara McDowell, will facilitate a Q&A with the audience.

Mari Spirito is the Founding Director of Protocinema, a nonprofit realising transnational, site-aware exhibitions around the world, based in Istanbul. Protocinema recently presented Diner Noire, with Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera in Istanbul; early work by Gerard Byrne in a former Chinese deli in New York; and new work by Ahmet Ögüt in New York in partnership with Itinerant. Spirito served as an Advisor to the 2nd Mardin Biennial, Turkey (2012). Prior to founding Protocinema, she was Director of 303 Gallery in New York for 12 years, where she worked on large-scale, site-specific works by Mike Nelson and Doug Aitken. She holds a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston. Spirito is a Consultant for Art Basel's Conversation and Salons, and is on the boards of Participant Inc. and New Art Dealers Alliance in New York; and Collectorspace in Istanbul.

Övül DurmuÅŸoÄŸlu is a curator and writer based in Berlin and Istanbul. She completed an MFA in Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design at Sabanci University, Istanbul and participated in the Critical Studies program at Malmö Art Academy, Sweden (2005–06). In 2007, DurmuÅŸoÄŸlu was awarded the Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi Young Curators Award for her exhibition Data Recovery, GAMeC, Bergamo, and in 2010 she received a Rave Scholarship to work on a collaborative project of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa), Stuttgart and the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart. In 2013, DurmuÅŸoÄŸlu curated the festival Sofia Contemporary. As a Goethe Institute Fellow at Maybe Education and Public Programs for dOCUMENTA (13), she organised the programs, What is Thinking? Or a Taste That Hates Itself; Readers Circle: 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts; and Paper Mornings: Book Presentations at dOCUMENTA (13). DurmuÅŸoÄŸlu has contributed to different catalogues, publications, and magazines such as Frieze d/e, Flash Art International, and …ment.

BaÅŸak ÅÅ¾enova is a curator and designer. She studied literature and graphic design (MFA in Graphic Design and PhD in Art, Design and Architecture at Bilkent University) and attended the 7th Curatorial Training Programme of Stichting De Appel, Amsterdam. She has been writing on art, technology and media, initiating and developing projects and curating exhibitions since 1995. ÅÅ¾enova is an editorial correspondent for ibraaz.org and one of the founding members of NOMAD, as well as the organizer of ctrl_alt_del and Upgrade!Istanbul. ÅÅ¾enova was the curator of the Pavilion of Turkey at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). As an assistant professor, she has lectured at various universities in Istanbul, such as Kadir Has University, Bilgi University and Koç University. She co-curated UNCOVERED (Cyprus) and the 2nd Biennial of Contemporary Art, D-0 ARK Underground (Bosnia and Herzegovina). ÅÅ¾enova is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Istanbul Biennial and D-0 ARK Underground, and of the Advisory Committee of Protocinema. She is the curator of the Helsinki Photography Biennial 2014, Jerusalem Show, and the Art Gallery Chair of SIGGRAPH 2014 (ACM), Vancouver. basaksenova.com

November Paynter is Associate Director of Research and Programmes, SALT in Istanbul. She was previously Curator for Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center 2002–2006, Assistant Curator of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial in 2005, and among other achievements was the 2003 recipient of the Premio Lorenza Bonaldi per L'arte – EnterPrize, as the first curator under the age of 30 to be recognised with this award. In 2007, Paynter was Consultant Curator at Tate Modern for the exhibition Global Cities and her recent independent curatorial projects include New Ends Old Beginnings at the Bluecoat and Open Eye galleries in Liverpool (2008); The columns held us up at Artists Space in New York (2009); and As the Land Expands at Al Riwaq Art Space in Bahrain (2010). Paynter also worked on 0 – Now: Traversing West Asia (co-curated with Russell Storer) for the 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane in 2011. Paynter writes for art periodicals including Artforum, Bidoun and ArtAsiaPacific, as well as for artist and exhibition publications.

Mari Spirito, Övül DurmuÅŸoÄŸlu, BaÅŸak ÅÅ¾enova and November Paynter have been brought to Australia by Artspace, Sydney, in partnership with Protocinema, Istanbul, in the lead-up to the Australian-Turkish year of collaboration (2015).

This curatorial research visit and public talk is generously supported and enabled by the Australia Council for the Arts and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The Gertrude Contemporary-Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines – including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies – as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

DR JAMES PARKER, THE JURISPRUDENCE OF SONIC WARFARE

Dr James Parker gives the third lecture in a series presented by Gertrude Contemporary, Discipline and Liquid Architecture on the theories and histories of sound.

World War 1 marked a watershed in the history of sonic warfare. Noise and war have always gone together, but never before had sound been so devastatingly weaponised. 'Soldiers knew within hours on the Front,' writes historian Hiller Schwartz, ‘that the Great War was noise, that the noise was dangerous, and if noise of itself was not fatal then it was advance notice, and emblem, of mortality.’ In the subsequent century the techniques of sonic warfare have become increasingly refined as their effects have become less and less visible. So-called ‘sonic booms’ were unleashed quite deliberately over Nicaragua in the early 1980s and over Palestine in 2005, exploited as much for their material force as for their capacities in relation to what Steve Goodman calls the ‘sonic dimension of the ecology of fear’. Technologies like the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) are being put to daily use both by domestic police forces and by the US military in Iraq. The use of sound, music and silence in relation to ‘enhanced interrogation’ practices in the ongoing ‘war against terror’ are well documented. And all of this takes place relative to a field of ‘civilian’ musical practice, discourse and consumption which is much less innocent than we like to think.

How should we think the weaponisation of sound? And what, if anything, has law got to do with it? The ‘sonic booms’ over Nicaragua were raised in proceedings before the International Court of Justice, but made legally cognisable only as airspace violations. In legal terms, the LRAD is so readily available internationally precisely because it is presented as a ‘communication device’ rather than a ‘weapon’. Torture is in principle criminalised, but the invisibility of sound in ‘interrogation practices’ is invariably exploited in order to mask its violence, and the playlists in question (Britney, Metallica, Barney the Dinosaur) are far more likely to raise a chuckle than juridical concern. Is law capable of any sort of purchase here at all? Or is it in fact a part of the problem? What, in other words, is the jurisprudence of sonic warfare?

Dr James Parker is a lecturer at Melbourne Law School, where he is also director of the research program ‘Law, Sound and the International’ at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities. He is currently putting the finishing touches to a monograph – Acoustic Jurisprudence: Listening to the Trial of Simon Bikindi (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) – which considers the trial of Simon Bikindi, who was accused by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda of inciting genocide with his songs. James is also an active music critic and radio broadcaster. These days he does most of his music writing for Tiny Mix Tapes. Since 2011, he has presented a weekly radio show dedicated to experimental sounds on Melbourne’s PBS 106.7fm.

TERRY SMITH LECTURE

GERTRUDE CONTEMPORARY, DISCIPLINE AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA PRESENT:

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to be partnering with Discipline and the National Gallery of Victoria to present World Art Now, The Provincialism Problem Then: 40 years of contemporary art, a lecture by Terry Smith.

In this lecture, Smith will describe the circumstances of the writing of the article The Provincialism Problem, first published in New York magazine Artforum in September 1974. This article was among one of the first to question the concentration of modernist values in the artworld in cities such as New York, Paris, and London. The Provincial Problem has since been continously reprinted, and is frequently referred to by artists, critics, theorists and historians around the world, making it one of the most cited texts by an Australian writer on art. In this lecture Smith will trace the responses to the article up to the present day, including his own changes of mind. He will consider how the problems and possibilities identified in the 1970's have fared since then, and how world pictures changed during the shift from late modern to contemporary art.

Terry Smith, FAHA, CIHA, is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the National Institute for Experimental Arts, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney. He is the 2010 winner of the Franklin Jewett Mather Award for art criticism conferred by the College Art Association (USA), and in 2011 received the Australia Council Visual Arts Laureate Award.

DOUGLAS KAHN, SOUND MATTERS: ONE ENERGY AMONG OTHERS

Douglas Kahn gives the second lecture in a series presented by Gertrude Contemporary, Discipline and Liquid Architecture festival on the theories and histories of sound.

This exploratory talk will follow from Douglas Kahn's most recent book, Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts (University of California Press, 2013). The book, over a decade in the making, is a fundamental reworking in the histories of science, communications, music and the arts to account for the incursion of electromagnetism into culture from the nineteenth century to the present. It covers such figures as Thomas Watson, Henry David Thoreau, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Joyce Hinterding and Alvin Lucier, Kahn's former teacher. Investigating the trade between acoustics and electromagnetism in aesthetics and the arts poses questions for new approaches in the arts, ecology and media where sound is but one energy among others.

Douglas Kahn is Professor of Media and Innovation and Australian Research Council Fellow at the National Institute for Experimental Arts, UNSW Art and Design, and formerly Professor of Science and Technology Studies at University of California at Davis. Kahn's writings are central to the fields of sound studies, sound in the arts, media arts history and history of experimental music. His books include Noise Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Avant-garde (MIT Press, 1999), Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio and the Avant-garde (MIT Press, 1992), Source: Music of the Avant-garde, 1966–1973 (University of California Press, 2011), Mainframe Experimentalism: Early Computing and the Foundations of the Digital Arts (University of California Press, 2012), and Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts (University of California Press, 2013). His current project is A Natural History of Media.

DAVID GRUBBS, RECORDS RUIN THE LANDSCAPE

David Grubbs gives the first lecture in a series presented by Gertrude Contemporary, Discipline and Liquid Architecture, in partnership with Room40, on the theories and histories of sound.

John Cage’s disdain for records was legendary. He repeatedly spoke of the ways in which recorded music was antithetical to his work. In this presentation from his book Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording, Grubbs argues that, following Cage, new genres in experimental and avant-garde music in the 1960s (indeterminate music, long-duration minimalism, text scores, happenings, live electronic music, free jazz, and free improvisation) were particularly ill-suited to be represented in the form of a recording. Despite this, present-day listeners are coming to know that era’s experimental music through the recorded artefacts of composers and musicians who largely disavowed recordings.

David Grubbs is associate professor in the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, CUNY, a contributing editor in music for BOMB Magazine, directs the Blue Chopsticks record label, and serves as a member of ISSUE Project Room’s Board of Directors. His musical career encompasses twelve solo albums, membership of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait, performances with Red Krayola, Will Oldham, Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, and Loren Connors, and cross-disciplinary collaborations with writers Susan Howe and Rick Moody, visual artists Anthony McCall, Angela Bulloch, and Stephen Prina, and choreographer Jonah Bokaer.

HELEN JOHNSON

Failing Up: On Painting and Discursive Stupidity

TUESDAY 15 JULY, 2014, 6PM FOR 6:30PM

Wit and stupidity might seem unlikely bedfellows in some senses, but in painting as in philosophy they find common ground. As something of a shamed medium in a post-medium specific context, it might be said that painting is ripe for humour—for Schadenfreude in particular—and its aesthetic inclinations can be co-opted in the service of the joke.

Building on ideas drawn from Uwe Wirth’s theory of discursive stupidity and the re-situation of genius as the cousin of foolishness, this lecture will outline an argument for wit and stupidity as strategies for painting. This argument is attended by the proposition that a connection can be drawn between the outside-ness of stupidity and the outside-ness of critical distance, and that the point where the two meet is in aesthetic experience, in the meta-cognitive space that constitutes neither thought nor sensation, and which resists an end in understanding.

Helen Johnson (born 1979) is an artist and writer based in Melbourne. Recent exhibitions include Ex-execs at Minerva, Sydney; Time Enough For Love at Chapter House Lane, Melbourne; Meantime at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne; Mural Problem at Otras Obras, Tijuana; Air to Surface at Prism, Los Angeles; Melbourne Now at the NGV and Collage: The Heide Collection at Heide Museum of Modern Art. She is a regular contributor to Un Magazine and Discipline. She recently completed a PhD at Monash University entitled Critical Form: On Proceeding as a Painter.

The Gertrude Contemporary – Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

TINNN READER LAUNCH

TiNNN READER LAUNCH

SATURDAY 12 APRIL, 5PM – 7PM

Please join us for the TiNNN reader launch this Saturday at Gertrude Contemporary.

Following her residency at Gertrude Contemporary's Visiting Curators Program in March 2014, Berlin curator Fiona Geuss led a workshop, together with artists and Public School founders Caleb Waldorf and Sean Dockray, that resulted in creation of the TiNNN reader. The publication comprises readings proposed by participants following the workshop.

This reader states that there is no now now, or that - as Russian literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin put it - everyday anew we have to answer the questions addressed by art with our own lives.

The focus was oriented towards how institutional frameworks impact and inform our practices in an ongoing manner, from the perspective of the day to day activities that comprise our work. The conversation departed from the opposition and the resistance mobilised against the Biennale of Sydney's funding by Transfield and the subsequent repercussions, both known and speculative. The desire was to connect the situation taking place in this context to a broader set of concerns facing many who work within, and rely on, contemporary cultural infrastructures.

As output of the workshop participants decided to create a reader related to topics around corporate funding, alternative institutions, and the social impact of art. Over the course of one week, we collected the group’s contributions for seven chapters that emerged during our discussion. Without having a precise goal this collection called TiNNN could be followed by an annotated publication, be a starting point of a series of public events in different places, or serve as compilation for further discussions - in Melbourne and elsewhere.

ASSEMBLY IS A PLATFORM FOR DISCUSSION IN RESPONSE TO CURRENT EVENTS AND IDEAS

Recent debates have raised a number of questions about the nature and ethics of western artistic practices that appropriate from nonwestern cultures. This forum intends to explore the colonial history of cultural appropriation in Australia, and to reflect on what continuities exist between contemporary and historical forms and strategies of appropriation.

Gertrude Assembly is hosting this forum following discussion generated by the recent exhibition of work by Melbourne fashion label P.A.M. with the intention of expanding and extending the dialogue.

Moderator:

Eugenia Flynn is the co-ordinator of the Willin Centre at the VCA.

Speakers:

Paola Balla was a curator in the Melbourne Indigenous Arts Festival in 2012. She is an artist, community arts practitioner, Indigenous studies lecturer and, most recently, a Victorian Indigenous Art Award (VIAA) winner.

Texta Queen uses the humble felt-tip pen to explore politics of sexuality, gender, race and identity in tangent with ideas of self-image and inter-personal relationships. Texta also publishes widely on race and racism.

Dr. Odette Kelada is a lecturer in Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne. Odette Kelada researches and publishes on whiteness, race and gender in Australian writing and the arts. Key interests include the constructions of nation, body and identity in creative representations and the pedagogy of racial literacy.

Dianne Jones is an artist whose work deals with indigenous identity and cultural history. She is represented by Niagara Galleries. She also teaches a racial literacy course with Odette Kelada.

GERTRUDE DISCIPLINE LECTURE 8

LECTURE #8: BLACK FEMINIST POETHICS - TOWARD THE END OF THE WORLD (AS WE KNOW IT)

DENISE FERREIRA DA SILVA

WITH RESPONDENT VIVIAN ZIRHERL

WEDNESDAY 27 NOVEMBER 2013, 6PM FOR 6:30PM, FREE EVENT

“Would the Poet’s intention emancipate the Category of Blackness from the scientific and historical ways of knowing which produced it in the first place, which has been the Black Feminist Critic worksite?

Perhaps Blackness emancipated from science and history would wonder about another praxis and wander away and beyond the World, guiding the Feminist to an imagining of other ways of knowing and doing. From without the World as we know it, gazing at the Horizon of The Thing – where the imagination plays unchained – such a Black Feminist Poethic could expose the whole field of possibilities for knowing and doing.

Towards this End, as a preliminary move, this talk returns to the task some call the critique of representation, with an account that confronts juridical (the authorised total violence of the police and the courts) and economic (the expropriation of total value from indigenous lands and enslaved labour) moments of racial subjugation.”

The Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Throughout 2013 lecturers have spoken from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

Denise Ferreira da Silva is a Professor in Ethics at Queen Mary-University London and currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at La Trobe University. She approaches Ethics and Political Theory with tools from critical legal theory, historical-materialism, feminist theory, racial and postcolonial/global studies. Her recent publications include: Toward a Global Idea of Race (2007), Notes Towards the End of Time (2013), “No-Bodies: Law, Raciality, Violence” (Griffith Law Review, 2009), “Accumulation, Dispossession and Debt: The Racial Logic of Global Capitalism,” W/ Paula Chackravartty (American Quarterly 2012), and “To be Announced: Radical Praxis (at) the Limits of Justice” (Social Text, 2013).

Vivian Ziherl is a researcher, curator and critic. Since 2011 she has been a Curator at If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part Of Your Revolution in Amsterdam. Independent projects include “Landings” (Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art and other partner organizations) and “StageIt!” (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam). Her writing has appeared in periodicals including e-flux Journal, Scapegoat, Pages Magazine, Frieze, LEAP Magazine, Metropolis M, Discipline, Eyeline and theJournal of Art (Art Association of Australia and New Zealand), among others.

SOCIAL UTOPIAS AND SOCIAL AGENCY PANEL DISCUSSION

Tuesday 22 October 2013, 6 – 8pm

Art and political agency, where do they meet?

At this time of increased urgency for interrogation of legal and political structures surrounding seeking asylum, the Social Utopias and Social Agency Panel Discussion considered the question of the limits of activism and advocacy within the context of art and explored the various forms of ‘the law’ that bind individuals across history, cultures and geography.

Artist Royce Ng, Australian Somali community member Fuad Jama, Director of the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre Jana Favero, Academic and Curator Dr Vivian Gerrand, and Curator Louise Neri reflected on art and the social, and the experience of displacement, and cultural identity as explored in the Somali Peace Band project.

Somali musician Abdi Mohamed Abdi spent sixteen years in a refugee camp in Kenya where he formed the Somali Peace Band with singer Daacad Rashid. Their music made them famous. Today Abdi lives free in Melbourne while Daacad lives in Nairobi, in constant fear of persecution while awaiting the outcome of his application for asylum in Australia.

In 2010, Chinese Australian artist Royce Ng saw Abdi perform in Melbourne and became involved in putting him back in touch with Daacad in Kenya, and re-recording the songs of the Somali Peace Band. The project, presented by Gertrude Contemporary and Melbourne Festival, includes Ng’s immersive three-channel video installation and an open social space with events programmed by members of Melbourne’s Somali community.

THE SOMALI KITCHEN, TALK AND TASTING

Sunday 20 October 2013, 3 – 5pm

The Somali Kitchen presented an afternoon of talks and tastings on Somali food culture as part of the The Somali Peace Band.

The diversity of contemporary Somali food tells the histories of the Somali landscape, Arab and Persian trade routes, British, French and Italian colonialism, the nomadism of the Cushitic culture, civil unrest and relocation in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen, Egypt and Australia.

The Somali Kitchen is a collective of Somali nomads living in Melbourne who share their love of the rich and diverse Somali cuisine through their recipe blog www.somalikitchen.com

Abshiro, Mariam, Shukri and Abderazzaq talked about their favourite Somali dishes and the stories behind the recipes.

The migration of many Somali from their homeland has created a need to recognise the importance of Somali language as a living cultural record. Because of the nation’s love of oral communication Somalia is also known as a nation of poets. Today, the Australian Somali community faces the challenge of reconciling the Somali and Australian language and culture.

Nadia Faragaab is currently developing the Somali English Dictionary application through the Burji Arts Somali Language Preservation Project. This major linguistic project involves the collection of Somali words from all dialects. This initiative has recently been awarded the Vice Chancellors Award from the University of Melbourne. In her discussion Nadia reflected on cultural archiving and the shifting nature of contemporary Somali language in the context of changing communities. Poems were read during the evening by Australian Somali poets Said Farah AKA Shirwa and Munira Jate.

Burji Arts is an organisation dedicated to celebrating Somali art and culture through visual art, performance and Somali language. www.burjiarts.com

From peer-to-peer utopianism of a decade ago to the power and data centralising within today’s Internet platforms, Sean Dockray will survey how the structure of digital property has changed over recent years with the growth of “the cloud” in the seventh lecture of the Gertrude Contemporary – Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series.

Dockray, initiator of knowledge-sharing platforms The Public School and aaaarg.org, will draw on computer science to trace the shifts in online knowledge sharing in what he calls “a dark lecture, written under the cloud’s shadow”, but one that will attempt to gesture toward “cracks in those interfaces that define the seemingly impermeable contours of this new reality.”

The Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbournebased contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Throughout 2013 lecturers have spoken from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

Sean Dockray is an artist, a founding director of the Los Angeles non-profit Telic Arts Exchange, and initiator of knowledge-sharing platforms The Public School and aaaarg. org. As a research fellow the Post-Media Lab at Leuphana University last year, he explored the physical infrastructure of the sharing economy, focusing on Facebook’s new northern European datacenter. His written essays address topics such as online education (Frieze), the militarization of universities (in Contestations: Learning from Critical Experiments in Education), book scanning (Fillip), traffic control (Cabinet), and radio (Volume).

Jake Goldenfein is a Fellow and PhD candidate at the Centre for Media and Communications Law at Melbourne Law School doing socio-legal research on histories of communication technologies and the legal regimes governing them with a focus on state archives (criminal records, photos and dossiers). He has been a researcher at Melbourne Law School, New York Law School, and The Swinburne Institute for Social Research in the fields of intellectual property, media and communications history and theory, communications policy, privacy and media law. His recent publications cover topics such as police photography, informal media economies, legal accidents, and the history of the archive.

We are pleased to announce that the sixth lecture of the Gertrude Contemporary – Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series will be given by Melbourne academic and writer Professor Nikos Papastergiadis.

In this lecture, On Friendship, Papastergiadis will consider what role sensory awareness plays in our knowledge of contemporary art. He will argue that the answer to these questions requires more than just looking at art.

The Gertrude Contemporary – Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Throughout 2013 lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

Nikos Papastergiadis is Professor at the School of Culture and Communication and Director of the Research Unit in Public Cultures at the University of Melbourne. His current research focuses on the investigation of the historical transformation of contemporary art and cultural institutions by digital technology. His publications include Modernity as Exile (1993), Dialogues in the Diaspora (1998), The Turbulence of Migration (2000), Metaphor and Tension (2004) Spatial Aesthetics: Art Place and the Everyday (2006), Cosmopolitanism and Culture (2012) as well as being the author of numerous essays which have been translated into over a dozen languages and appeared in major catalogues such as the Biennales of Sydney, Liverpool, Istanbul, Gwanju, Taipei, Lyon, Thessaloniki and Documenta 13.

We are pleased to announce that the fifth lecture of the Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series will be given by Irish critic and curator Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, followed by a conversation with Rebecca Coates.

Mac Giolla Léith will draw on his research in the fields of Irish-language linguistics and literary criticism to address artworks including Franz Ackermann’s Mental Maps (1991-), Douglas Gordon’s Play Dead. Real Time (2003) and Ceal Floyer’sThings (2009). He will contextualise these works within wider debates surrounding the relationship between words and things and between naming and mapping. The lecture will also consider various questions raised by the resurgence in recent years of a variety of ahumanist forms of thought.

The Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Throughout 2013 lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith is visiting Australia as part of the Gertrude Contemporary Visiting Curators Program which is funded by Arts Victoria.

Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith is a critic and occasional curator who teaches in the School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics at University College Dublin. In addition to his writings on literature in the Irish language he has published widely on contemporary art. Among his most recent publications are monographic essays on the work of Douglas Gordon, Annette Kelm, Elad Lassry, Anj Smith, John Stezaker and James Welling. He is a contributor to Afterall, Artforum, Frieze, Parkett and Tate Etc. He has curated exhibitions in Dublin, London, Amsterdam and New York and was a juror for the 2005 Turner Prize.

Rebecca Coates is an independent curator and writer, Associate Curator, ACCA, and lecturer in Art History and Art Curatorship, School of Culture and Communications, University of Melbourne. In 2013 she completed a PhD in the field of exhibition histories. She has worked extensively as a curator in Australia and overseas, including ACCA, the NGV, and MOMA Oxford, where she curated and developed an extensive program of touring exhibitions and collaborative projects with art spaces and museums in the UK and Europe. She writes regularly for Australian and international art journals and publications.

GERTRUDE CONTEMPORARY - DISCIPLINE LECTURE # 4: LAUREN CORNELL

Wednesday, 31 July, 6.30 - 7.30pm

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to announce that New York based curator Lauren Cornell will give the fourth lecture in the Gertrude Contemporary – Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series. Cornell is one of the most innovative curators practising today and is undertaking a curatorial residency at the invitation of Gertrude Contemporary, which has been supported by the Australia Council for the Arts.

During her talk, Cornell will give a succinct overview of art engaged with the internet, and explore how the vastly accelerated circulation and distribution of contemporary art has facilitated the emergence of new communities, new aesthetics and formal trends and a host of discursive opportunities, and challenges. Cornell will focus on her work with Rhizome, as well as recent exhibitions she has organized, including Free (2010) at the New Museum, and Circulate (2012) at Foam, Amsterdam, and briefly discuss her work as Curator of the Museum as Hub and The 2015 New Museum Triennale.

Formerly Executive Director of Rhizome, Cornell is now Curator of 2015 Triennial (with Ryan Trecartin), Curator of Digital Projects and the Museum as Hub, which is a new model for curatorial practice and institutional collaboration at the New Museum. During her visit to Australia Cornell will be researching for these projects, meeting with artists, galleries and other curators. Her dynamic approach has been recognised internationally and she has co-curated two recent pivotal exhibitions; The Generational: Younger than Jesus, 2009 (co-curated with Massimiliano Gioni and Laura Hoptman) and Free, 2010, both at the New Museum, amongst numerous other exhibitions.

Gertrude Contemporary’s Visiting Curators Program, funded through the Australia Council for the Arts’ Visiting International Curators Program, aims to open new opportunities for Australian artists to locate their work in an international context, and for international curators to establish ongoing, in-depth relationships with Australian peers and networks. During her visit Cornell will be focusing on research and development for her current curatorial projects at the New Museum.

Cornell’s inclusion in the Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is an exciting and rare opportunity for a Melbourne audience to hear one of the most critically engaged curators speak about key issues in media art today.

The Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Throughout 2013 lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

CURATOR'S AND ARTISTS' FLOORTALK AS PART OF OCTOPUS 13: ON THIS DAY ALONE

Saturday 27 July, 2-3pm

As part of Octopus 13: on this day alone, Cuartor Glenn Barkley along with artists Madeleine Preston, Luke Willis Thompson and Agatha-Gothe Snape will provide a guided walk through of the exhibition.

on this day alone explores the ways that eight Australian and international artists, most of whom are not normally considered photographers, employ photography within their practice. The artists in Barkley’s selection use photography as a means to an end rather than an end in itself, highlighting how photography can be both research material as well as a final object.

LECTURE #3: JUSTIN CLEMENS, WHAT DO WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ART?

Monday 24 June, 6pm for 6:30pm. This is a free event and bookings are unnecessary.

We are pleased to announce that the third lecture of the Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series will be given by Justin Clemens. His lecture What do we talk about when we talk about contemporary art? will coincide with the publication of his forthcoming book Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy.

This lecture surveys the most important theories of contemporary art – including those by Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Boris Groys, Jacques Ranciere, various Octoberites and so-called Speculative Realists – in order to point out their strengths and weaknesses, and outline several possible new ways of talking about art.

The Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Throughout 2013 lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

Justin Clemens writes extensively on contemporary Australian art and European philosophy. His books include Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP 2013); Minimal Domination(Melbourne: Surpllus 2011), a collection of writings on art; and, with Dominic Pettman, Avoiding the Subject (Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP 2004). His creative works include the poetry chapbook Me ‘n’ me trumpet (Sydney: Vagabond 2011); the novella Black River (Melbourne: re.press 2007), with collages by Helen Johnson; and the mock-epic poem The Mundiad (Melbourne: Black Inc 2004). He is also the co-editor of collections on and by such major contemporary thinkers as Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, and Jacqueline Rose. He teaches at the University of Melbourne.

Listen to Justin Clemens' lecture What do we talk about when we talk about contemporary art? here.

GERTRUDE CONTEMPORARY - DISCIPLINE: CONTEMPORARY ART LECTURE SERIES

LECTURE #2: THE TRAUMA OF THE POLITICAL - OR CATCH ME I'M FALLING (INTO THE AMBIVALENT ARMS OF LAW)

DR JULIET ROGERS IN CONVERSATION WITH MARIA TUMARKIN

The second lecture of the Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series The Trauma of the Political – or, catch me I’m falling (into the ambivalent arms of law) will be given by Dr Juliet Rogers followed by a conversation with writer and cultural historian Maria Tumarkin.

There is an excitement about falling that betrays itself in images and experiences of the flesh, from Richard Drew’s capture of the Falling Man during September 11, 2001, to climate change activists’ depictions of the psychosis of not believing we will hit the ground, and the suspended nature of the work of William Kentridge. Art and falling go hand in hand, and Rogers suggests, so too does politics. We can see the current politics of the liberal democratic, in which sovereign aggression is excused by sovereign care. Where law both pushes the subject into the abyss in the interests of its protection, and where flesh is cut, tortured and even killed as a mode of justice. A contemporary democratic politics that embodies such paradox offers a thin space between the air and the ground, and demands the fantasy of endless capture, for some, and the foreclosure of the possibility that flesh may fall and not be caught.

The Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Throughout 2013 lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

Dr Juliet Rogers is Faculty Member at the School of Political Sciences, Criminology at the University of Melbourne, and currently an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow undertaking a psychoanalytic examination of the ‘Quality of Remorse’ after periods of political and military conflict. She was formerly a community worker and then a psychotherapist. She turned from this life to work in academia and she has recently been a Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence, at Yale Law School, Connecticut and at the University of Cape Town Law School, South Africa. Her work is always a melding between psychoanalysis and law, that is, it is always a concern with the limit. She recently published Law’s Cut on the Body of Human Rights: Female Circumcision, Torture and Sacred Flesh which will be out in July with Routledge, and she is currently working on a monograph on Remorse.

Maria Tumarkin is a Melbourne-based writer and culturalhistorian. She is the author of three acclaimed books of ideas: Traumascapes, Courage and Otherland. Maria’s essays – tackling our culture’s preoccupations and blindspots – have been included in Best Australian Essays 2011 and 2012. Maria holds a PhD in cultural history from the University of Melbourne. She has taught at universities and writing centres, directed video clips, written radio documentaries, contributed catalogue essays for galleries and museums, and forged ongoing collaborations with artists and psychologists. She is a 2013-14 Sidney Myer Creative Fellow.

Listen to Juliet Rogers lecture The Trauma of the Political – or, catch me I’m falling (into the ambivalent arms of law) here.

GERTRUDE CONTEMPORARY - DISCIPLINE: CONTEMPORARY ART LECTURE SERIES

LECTURE #1: REX BUTLER, JOHN NIXON: A COMMUNIST ARTIST.

Thursday 11 April, 2013

The first lecture of the Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series, Rex Butler's lecture, ‘John Nixon: A Communist Artist’, examined the work of Melbourne-based abstract artist John Nixon, who has been the subject of much discussion over the past twenty years. Nixon has been lauded for continuing the radical experiments of Russian constructivism, criticised for not being truly experimental, and positioned as continuing an avant-garde tradition that somehow brings together the monochrome and the readymade. In this lecture and accompanying paper, published in the journal Discipline, issue 3, Rex Butler reads Nixon’s work through the writings of art critic Boris Groys to suggest that it is—of all things—communist. The lecture was a fantastic success, with over 175 attendants and a well-defined critical debate taking place at its conclusion.

Rex Butler teaches in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland, specialising in contemporary and Australian art. He is currently working on a book on Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy?

The Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline will be collaborating with Gertrude Contemporary to present a series of lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. The guest lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds. The lectures will be held at Gertrude Contemporary throughout 2013 and are free of charge. Banner design generously provided by Annie Wu.

As part of Gertrude Contemporary’s No-Name Station exhibition, an exhibition walk-through by the curators and artist talks took place during the exhibition’s afternoon opening function. On Saturday 17 March 2012 from 3:00pm, curators Alexie Glass-Kantor, Colin Chinnery, Quentin Sprague and artist Wang Wei (Beijing, China), presented talks about No Name Station, an innovative China/Australia cultural exchange project.

A collaborative endeavour between Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne), Iberia Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), and Warmun Arts Centre (Warmun, WA), this multi-faceted project has involved contributions by 13 visual artists, 1 writer, and a curatorium from Australia and China; and has encompassed 2 exhibitions, a group residency, a major publication and public programs from 2010 – 2012.

Tuesday 17 May – 4 June 2011Special Project(s) to be developed in situ by André Avelãs at Gertrude Contemportary. Further information will be made available shortly.

REASON & RHYME ARTIST TALKS AND FORUM

As part of the exhibition Reason and Rhyme two sets of artist talks and one closed forum occurred during the exhibition period.

On Saturday 19 March 2011 the curators Emily Cormack, Charlotte Huddleston and Amita Kirpalani along with participating artists Maddie Leach, Richard Frater, Campbell Patterson, Simon Morris and Mimi Tong participated in a walk-through of the exhibition and artist talks.

On Saturday 2 April 2011 the curators Emily Cormack, Charlotte Huddleston and Amita Kirpalani along with participating artists Damiano Bertoli, Jake Walker and Hanna Tai participated in a walk-through of the exhibition and artist talks.

On Monday 21 March 2011 a closed forum was held in the gallery within the exhibition. Pariticipants included each of the participating artists who were in Melbourne along with Adrien Allen, Jan Bryant, Justin Clemens, Kyla McFarlane, Katie Lee, Lou Hubbard, Rebecca Coates, Jacqueline Doughty, Alexie Glass-Kantor and the project's curators as well as the fabio Ongarato Designers Meg Philips, Matt Edwards and Dan Peterson.

As part of this project, which includes a reciprocal residency with New Zealand and two exhibitions, the curators were interested in expanding this discussion via a closed forum to explore the broader implications of the intersections between subjectivity and systems across curatorial methodology and other areas such as publishing.

The purpose of the discussion was to bring together the Reason and Rhyme artists and curators, along with several curators and artists based in Melbourne - with whom we have worked with in the past or hope to work with in the future. The curators felt that this was a unique opportunity to discuss a range of topics as they related to the parameters of Reason and Rhyme as a curatorial model and more importantly in regards to the content of the exhibition itself where overlapping themes and points of contact between practices are concerned. The discussions were an opportunity to broaden the scope of the project and discuss its content.

The discussion topics were as follows:

Curating as just another system? Can the exhibition model and curatorial methodology in general be understood as a kind of system that can give shape or order to creative output, and if so what are the ethical and creative outcomes of this process.

Integrated curatorial processes: When curating is approached as a macro model of the ideas presented within works in the exhibition, what happens to the status of the art object? And the status of the exhibition? Is this a productive way of approaching group exhibitions? Where the exhibition is merely a sum of its parts?

Exhibition catalogues: Are they a further encrypting of curatorial methodology on an art work or are they a useful archive and living monument to the ideas explored within an exhibition?

These discussions will feed into and directly influence the form and content of the second incarnation of the exhibition that will occur at ST PAUL st, Auckland in October 2011. The discussions will also be used to shape and formulate the exhibition catalogue - and as such our graphic designers from Fabio Ongarato Design will actively participate in the discussions. These designers have worked on each of the catalogues for our past Gertrude’s residency/exhibition exchange projects and see that this kind of involvement feeds into the catalogue design.

Collaborative international exchange: how do these exhibitions create productive conduits for dialogue, are they ultimately impositions of unnatural traffic grids?

EVENTS AS PART OF DYLAN MARTORELL'S EXHIBITION AGAVES DE MARCO

As part of Dylan Martorell's exhibition in the Front Gallery Agaves De Marco, Gertrude Contemporary presents a series of musical, performative and discursive events.

Wednesday 23 February 2011, 12-5pmSymposium presented by Carl Scrase including members of the Wernakeus collective.There will be a day long discussion about the state of the arts in Melbourne.Where: Studio 12, Gertrude ContemporaryNo booking necessary - If you would like more information please contact the Wemakeus collective at: [email protected]

For a complete list of events please visit http://raeliankraal.blogspot.com

SRIWHANA SPONG IN CONVERSATION WITH EMILY CORMACK AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA

Saturday 5 February 2011

Sriwhana Spong will discuss her work in conversation with Gertrude Curator Emily Cormack. The talk is presented as part of the exhibition Unnerved: The New Zealand Project at The National Gallery of Victoria.

During the development of their exhibition for Craft Victoria, Chicks On Speed were in residence at Gertrude Contemporary. In this one-off event in Gertrude's Studio 18, they opened the doors of their studio for a conversation with Alexie Glass (and the audience) in an intimate tête-à-tête.

And the difference is... was part of Gertrude Contemporary’s ongoing international exhibition series - The Independence Project. This exhibition explored the human and personal perspectives that are embedded within bureaucratic agreements, and featured artists from Australia and Singapore.

The Independence Project was the first of Gertrude's ongoing international exhibition series, with the first exhibition taking place at GALERI PETRONAS in Kuala Lumpur in 2007 and at Gertrude in April 2008. Five of the Malaysian artists in the exhibition traveled to Australia for the opening at Gertrude and gave floor talks about their work.

21:100:100

17 December 2008

21:100:100 DOWNLOAD: FORUM AND BOOK LAUNCH

The 2008 Forum, 21:100:100 Download was an opportunity to discuss sound art and its relationship to contemporary art. The debate centred on ways in which the exhibition of sound art in a gallery context effects sound’s reception, perception and generation.

Using the Melbourne International Arts Festival exhibition 21:100:100 as a foundation for discussion, the forum brought artists, academics, curators, interdisciplinary writers, activists, composers/sound artists and practitioners from all over Australia to critically examine the sonic arts. The forum also coincided with the launch of an accompanying 370 full colour book designed by Fabio Ongarato Design.

The forum was chaired by Emily Cormack. Speakers included: Alexie Glass (Curatorium member and Gertrude Contemporary Art Space Director), Oren Ambarchi (Curatorium member and artist in 21:100:100), Marco Fusinato (Curatorium member and artist in 21:100:100), Anthony Pateras (composer and performer and artist in 21:100:100), Philip Samartzis (academic and artist in 21:100:100), David Shae (composer and artist in 21:100:100), Annalee Koernig (Experimental Music Performer and curator), Pat O’Brien (owner of Sunshine and Grease, sound performer and curator).

DIODE, FREAKGEEK, THE IS NOT DJS, VIXXEN LARVAE, ROBERT COOK STARF*CKERS, ARTERARTI AND ROCKPIGS 2

26 August 2009Starf*ckers, Arterarti and Rockpigs 2The Tote Hotel

In conjunction with the opening of Robert Cook’s Don’t Show Me Your Poetry, GCAS hosted Starf*ckers, Arterati and Rock Pigs at the Tote. Featuring the sounds of Perth-based artists Diode, Geoff Newton and Masato Takasaka’s band Vixxen Larvae, and The Is Not magazine DJs who battled it out with Robert Cook’s hits from his collection. Debuting at Starf*ckers this year was Melbourne band Freakgeek – featuring photographer Andrew Curtis and his 12 year old boy genius, Ike on drums and vocals.

26 October 2007As part of their Melbourne International Arts Festival projects for Gertrude Contemporary, artists Daniel Arsham and Alex Somers gave Saturday floortalks about their collaborative practices, which both meld the visual and performing arts: Daniel Arsham with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Alex Somers with Jonsi Birgisson, member of Icelandic band Sigur Ros.

Full Time Intimacy was a discussion about the role of relational aesthetics in contemporary visual culture. Highlighting the increasing prevalence of projects that engage with process and collaborative practice, the forum investigated the changes in relational practices within Australia.

Feminism Never Happened engaged with the perceptions of (and problems facing) feminism within contemporary culture. Discussion centred around several different topics; the influence of the media and popular culture, feminisms effect on different generations, feminism’s position as a movement and it’s possible future trajectory.

Drag/Mash explored creative strategies stemming from earlier forms of art making that were strongly influenced by 1980s theories of bricolage, appropriation and the archive. As a term, Drag/ Mash describes the incremental convergence of remixing, sampling and mimicry into art making. Drag/Mash is characterised by a synthesis of disparate techniques and technologies, the active use of illusion, and a reliance on text and articulation through performance.

In a time when international conflict, terrorism and border control were dominating our headlines and leading to a political climate of fear and aggression, this forum turned to artists and writers to provide a humane perspective on global turbulence. This forum examined how cultural producers and commentators connect to our humanity in a time when sedition is legislation. Turbulence investigated the consequences of speaking out against prevailing ideologies, and perhaps even challenging the party line of communities with which you, yourself, identify.

Inside Boxes; Outside Systems addressed the way artists work within and outside of art institutions. The forum investigated the various ways that artists have created their own alternatives to the institutional network of state galleries, contemporary art spaces and commercial galleries.

Working Space explored relationships between artistic practice and the landscape of the inner city. The forum addressed questions such as: Is the studio still an essential site of production for contemporary artists, or is the shift towards new methods of production changing the parameters in which artists work? And what are the challenges and opportunities for artists working in the contemporary urban landscape?